


Dream Sweet in Scene Major

by PomegranatePomsom



Category: Everyman HYBRID, MLAndersen0
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Childhood Trauma, Dreams, Gen, HABIT-Typical Assholery, Not Beta Read, Past Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-24
Updated: 2018-07-24
Packaged: 2019-06-15 20:33:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15421041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PomegranatePomsom/pseuds/PomegranatePomsom
Summary: In his bleary hospital room, Michael dreamed. In his dreams, he found the happiness that eluded him in the waking world.





	Dream Sweet in Scene Major

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alyssa_Heart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alyssa_Heart/gifts).



> A commission for Alyssa_Heart. If you have any interest in commissioning me, please let me know!
> 
> Partially inspired by http://princetonpalz.tumblr.com/
> 
> Title is a reference to "Dream Sweet in Sea Major" by Miracle Musical.

In his youth, to pass the long and unending hours in the hospital, Michael would sleep. It was the easiest, nurse-approved, doctor-recommended way to pass the time, so he would lay in bed and sleep, until his head throbbed and his eyes ached and he was forced to pretend he was alive for a few hours.

 

And in his sleep he dreamed vividly. Not at first, no-- the first year or so of his stay was plagued by dreamless, dull nights, where the images behind his eyes were as black and empty as his life.

 

But the images trickled in gradually, in snippets-- a group of blurry-faced young men and the warm feeling of being held; a man in a white coat, whose voice he couldn’t place but comforted him nonetheless-- and they excited him.

 

They didn’t come alone, however-- Patrick came with them. Like his dreams, Patrick slunk his way into Michael’s brain, new and unintimidating. He was not unlike an imaginary friend in the way he comforted Michael, told him what he needed to hear. But unlike an imaginary friend, Patrick was real-- Michael heard him, talked with him. At times, he would give Patrick control over one hand, and they would draw together.

 

Michael adored him. The hospital was so full of doctors-- so full of people who loved to ask him questions, but hated to understand him-- and so devoid of people he could play with, or even people who tolerated him outside of meals and pills and appointments and baths. It had just made sense that when someone came along who wanted him-- moreso than his parents, his doctors, his brother-- that Michael would cling to him.

 

And clung he did. If he was scared, he’d speak to Patrick in his head and he wouldn’t feel fear anymore. If the needle for his shot was too big, Patrick could erase the pain of the injection. If he was hungry, but breakfast was too far away, Patrick could placate his hunger. Patrick could make his cuts and bruises go away; Patrick could help him sleep. Patrick told him what to say to the doctors to avoid more pills, or he would coach him on how to cry when he desperately needed his parents. If Michael wanted, Patrick fulfilled.

 

Michael trusted him to know everything, and on one evening, Michael described the dreams to him-- hazy, soft, blissful. 

 

_ I gave those to you _ . Patrick said. It had been the first time Patrick had spoken with a tone of mischief, and also the first time Michael had noticed how similar their voices were.

 

“They’re amazing!” Michael replied. “But I wish they weren’t so blurry. I wanna know who those people are.”

 

And Patrick laughed! But not in the same way he had laughed when Michael told him a new joke or when they had collaborated to draw the ugliest nurse possible. This was something different, though, if you had asked Michael, he wouldn’t have called it malicious.

 

_ I can make them better _ , Patrick told him.  _ I can show you who the people are, if you want. _

 

Michael nodded. He knew Patrick could see him do it; words, even internal ones, had long stopped being a necessity for communication.

 

_ Okay _ , Patrick said. The nice, sweet tone was back.  _ But you gotta do me a favor too, okay? _

 

“What kind of favor?”

 

_ Let me be Michael tomorrow. I wanna walk and talk and eat, just to see what it’s like. _

 

Michael frowned. Patrick was nice and funny, and he always knew the right thing to say-- but Michael wasn’t sure he wanted someone else pretending to be him. What if someone found out? Then both of them would be in trouble!

 

_ No one’s gonna know, _ Patrick assured him.  _ I’ll be good! And even if someone finds out, I’ll make sure we don’t get in trouble. I promise. _

 

“I wasn’t worried about you being good.” Of course he wasn’t-- Patrick was the best, kindest person he knew. “But are you sure we won’t get in t-”

 

_ I’m sure. If we did, I might have to go away, and nobody wants that! _

 

“Yeah.” Michael nodded again, his voice trailing off.

 

_ You can think about it if you want. Just tell me later, okay? I can’t do it unless you tell me I can. _

 

So Michael lay on the floor in his little cell, and he stared up at the ceiling and he closed his eyes and he thought. And while he did mull over his answer, he didn’t mull long.

 

And he slept. And he dreamt.

 

\---

 

In his dream, Michael had a cigarette between his lips. It was lifelike, the smoke in his lungs, the taste of the filter against his tongue, the nicotine in his blood. He took a long drag of it and it relaxed him, though he was quite certain he hated cigarettes in real life.

 

He stood in a small group of six or so young men, his back against a solid wall. A few of the youths talked amongst themselves, while others simply enjoyed their smokes and the fresh air. There was one young man whose full attention, however, was on him. Michael knew him-- he was one of the blurry reoccurring figures, now clear as crystal.

 

He was a shorter young man, but what he lacked in height he made up for in presence. A warmth, red-hot like a spot where lightning had struck, emanated from him. His long, shaggy hair was barely kept out of his eyes by a bandana tied to his forehead, and the entirety of his torso was swallowed up by a leather jacket two sizes too big. A look like this on any other guy would have screamed “Trying Too Hard”, but on him it just… worked.

 

“So what do you say, Michael?” The young man asked.

 

Michael didn’t answer. His throat was gummed up by smoke and the nonfunctioning passiveness of his own brain. So he just stared at the young man. Stared and stared until he took it as an answer and began to talk again. As he rattled on, his words began to fade out until they were muted entirely. In their stead came a high-pitched noise, a television on stand-by. The sound became louder and louder until it eventually erupted into a cacophonous static.

 

Michael put his hands over his ears, screwed his eyes shut in a futile attempt to keep the sound at bay. He stayed that way for a solid minute (or perhaps longer-- it was hard to keep time when he wasn’t awake), before a hand grabbed his arm. He flinched, peeked, saw it was the young man who held him.

 

Michael traded worried looks with him for a moment, until the young man began to rub his arm, and Michael gasped as the red-hot lightning warmth shot up his spine. It was unlike anything he’d ever felt before, and he worried his legs might betray him and turn to goo.

 

But someone called out in the distance (a voice that sounded like a seagull’s cry to the ears of Michael’s mind) and the young man relinquished his arm, giving Michael some much-needed relief. The youth with the wild brown hair thrust his thumb out toward the entrance of the building they leaned on and wordlessly said, “C’mon, let’s go!”

 

Michael slugged his way back inside, far behind--and yet so close to-- the young man. His insides coiled in confusion.

 

\---

 

And when he woke, he was nestled in the back of his own mind, Patrick at the helm. 

 

He saw nothing of the outside world. While Patrick used his body, his eyes, Michael was wrapped in a warm and inky blackness. Void, thick and sticky like honey, clung to the avatar of himself he’d created in his own mind. He felt safe in it, sedated and comfortable; the experience was not unlike his unremembered time in the womb. He was so comforted in it that he didn’t even question what might be happening in the outside world, what Patrick-- his best friend-- might be doing

 

Even had he known, there would be nothing he could do to stop that path they were hurtling down.

 

\---

 

They made a deal: one dream for one day. In the waking hours, Patrick took over, relishing in the routines that Michael hated. After he went to bed, Michael would play through another scene, laughing, running, drinking, and meeting the blurry-faced friends that enriched his night-life.

 

The messy-haired young man, Evan, was only the first. It wouldn’t be long before his brothers were introduced to him and, like puzzle pieces, they clicked together easily. Michael spent some of the best days of his life with them in his imaginary adulthood, free of the hospital and the people who had dumped him there. With the men in his head, he could shed the role of “crazy kid”-- they could see him as more than that.

 

Because they were “crazy kids” too.

 

Michael revisited his smoke-break with Evan, in the hopes that perhaps this time he could figure out (and subsequently answer) the question he had posed. While that particular endeavor had been fruitless, a different revelation had occurred when Michael followed him inside.

 

The scene was familiar-- a group of mostly-strangers together, in a circle. He took his seat next to Evan and scanned the faces around him. Tired, haggard faces were the most common, though the occasional jovial expression was to be found. One thing Michael noted in every person he accidentally stared at was the faint glimmer of strong-willed survival in their otherwise dull eyes. It made his heart race.

 

A thought floored him: If this was group therapy, that meant his friends needed it too. That meant they were like him--  _ crazy _ like him. But they were so well put together, so fun and so kind! Certainly it was just his brain, reaching at a far-fetched fantasy, but it made him happy! If his friends, made-up as they might be, could be broken but still grow up fine, maybe he could too!

 

“All right, all right!” A commanding, but soft, voice broke through the chatter that had filled up the room and cut through Michael’s thoughts. A man--whose entire appearenced screamed “Doctor!”-- entered the circle and sat in the only empty chair.

 

“Hey Dad!” Evan shouted out of turn. He waved his arm in the air, as if the doctor were across the campus and not fifteen feet away. The young man on Evan’s opposite side--his name was Vincent, as Michael had learned in another dream-- elbowed him in the side. In return, Vincent was elbowed right back. There was a bit of play-fighting between them, until the doctor loudly rapped his knuckles on his clipboard and, like a mission bell, the sound took their full attention.

 

“Hello, son.” The man replied sweetly. His grinning face had been grave a moment ago, but if he had been trying to act stern, he wasn’t very good at it. 

 

The group resumed the discussion it had started before the break. The specifics of the conversation-- of the inputs and outputs from the people there-- faded in and out, one moment clear, the next moment fuzzy. It was difficult for Michael to really understand what they were talking about, but the gist of it seemed to be about overcoming trauma. 

 

“Can anyone tell me a way to cope when bad memories pop up? I know it can be overwhelming when this happens, but how can we deal with it without hurting ourselves or others?” The doctor looked around the room for volunteers. When no one spoke up, he would simply call out names. He was quiet, patient as the startled person stumbled through their answer, and he would smile and nod and thank them, even the ones who gave answers that Michael considered stupid or banal.

 

And though he silently, guiltily judged others, when the doctor called upon Michael, he could offer no better answers, tripping over his heavy tongue and the blanks his “adult” brain continued to draw. Michael felt the familiar burn of shame crawl up his neck and spread across his face and ears. Yet, when his eyes dared travel up to meet the doctor’s, he saw that nothing but silent pride gazed back.

 

During the long and frequent dreams, exposure to this man began to make Michael’s chest ache. At times he towed along home with Vincent or Evan or Jeffrey, and he would see the doctor in his natural habitat, see how he spoke to his sons (and his daughter, who was apparently too “normal” for group therapy). At the Corenthal home, Michael felt that special kind of  _ ardor _ that only a father could give, and it twisted his heart up in knots.

 

Each of his children had been taken in voluntarily, and despite the problems they so obviously had, the doctor never showed any intention of throwing them away. He would never lock them away in a sanitary white hole where they were considered better seen and not heard-- and even if he did, he most certainly wouldn’t avoid visiting them, or writing to them. Or holding them. Or kissing them. Or telling them how much he loved them.

 

Briefly, Michael considered if this was how all fathers were supposed to be.

 

Less briefly, Michael considered how bad he must be to void that kind of love. 

 

\--

 

And with that brooding came the beginning of the end. While the dreams remained sweet as a whole, they became pocked by distortions, tears-- warps that ruined the immersion.

 

In one instance he and Jeff sat on a swing set, in the park not far from the Corenthal home. They swung back and forth gently, focused moreso on their (incredibly interesting) sneakers than the act of swinging. Michael felt an odd tension in the air-- something had happened between them, something outside of the scrapbook of dreams he had clipped together.

 

Unsure of how to proceed, Michael doesn’t push. He simply swung, stared at his sneakers. Swung, stared, sneakers. Swung, sneakers, stared. Stared, sneakers. Swung, stared. Sneakers, swung, stared. Stared. Stared.

 

Jeff stared at him. But half of his face was missing.

 

The flesh of his head, his delicate curls, twisted away from his body, up into a spiral of peach and brown. The left-hand side of his face bore no features at all, a baby blue eye sucked into whatever sort of hell-illusion Michael witnessed.

 

Unable to help himself, Michael reached out and swatted at the vortex; his fingers passed right through, and while the shape of the spiral wasn’t disturbed, a tingling feeling shot through his hand and up to his elbow. He quickly yanked his hand back, just as Jeff reached up to swat it away.

 

“Doesn’t that hurt?” Michael asked as he attempted to rub feeling back into his arm.

 

“What, you trying to hit me? No, it doesn’t, ‘cuz you suck at it.” Jeff’s tone skirted the edge of annoyance, but what remained of his countenance stayed flat and passive.

 

“No, I mean-- your face, it’s floating off.” Michael swished his pointer finger around and attempted to replicate the pattern of the vortex before him. “It looks like someone peeled half of it off and is trying to flush it-- very, very slowly.”

 

Jeff’s brows knit and his lips set in a hard line. His remaining eye focused hard on Michael, even as it began to shine in a familiar and cutting way. Wordlessly, he looked away from Michael with a sharp turn of the head.

 

“I don’t get you, Michael,” he said. “I mean, lately. All you do is-- say a bunch of shit that doesn’t make any sense. There’s this crap and then there was…”

 

He took in a long, deep breath. “The last time we were alone, in the shed after Vin and Evan went to bed.”

 

Jeff laughed softly and rested the heels of his palms against his eyes. “I don’t know why I need to get specific. It was like, two weeks ago. I’m sure you remember.”

 

Michael racked his brain, but even in the deepest recesses of his mind he could find no memories of the two of them in the little green shed.

 

“My point is, we were tipsy then, so I know you didn’t mean what you said back then-- just like you didn’t mean that thing about my face.” Jeff’s hands slide down, back into his lap. “But you can’t keep saying weird shit like that, Michael-- unnatural shit. They’re gonna try and put you away, just like they tried with Steph. You know that, don’t you?”

 

Michael nodded, throat dry. Frustration-- hot bile-- clamored up his throat and rested dangerously close to his tonsils. His eyes burned. Even in his dreams, his safe haven, he wasn’t completely free of the hospital. It followed him, patient, waiting, like the tall man who stood at the corners of his vision.

 

He hadn’t noticed he had begun to cry until a hand rested on the small of his back and jerked him from his thoughts. He quickly wiped the tears away and apologized, murmuring through his hiccups.

 

“It’s fine, Michael, it’s fine. I’m sorry.” Jeff’s voice was so soft, as if Michael were suddenly made of porcelain, delicate, on the verge of cracking. As if Jeffrey could crack him. “I didn’t mean to be insensitive. My counselor, she said I-- I always think I know what’s best for everyone else. But you know I just want you to be ha--”

 

“I know,” Michael spouted, too quickly. Jeff, thank God, didn’t flinch or turn away.

 

The awkwardness returned and settled upon them like dew. 

 

Something about this whole scene made him ache-- not just from the mention of being committed, but the scenario in full. It wasn’t right. He and Jeff had been amazing friends in every other dream-- to say they’d even had disagreements would be an exaggeration. Since their eyes had first met during a group session, Michael had known there was something special about him, something different. Jeff was gravitational and cosmic, the warmest of black holes. He’d pulled Michael in and wouldn’t let him go, and goodness knows Michael was thankful for every second of it.

 

What had changed?

 

“Jeff… What-- what did I say? In the shed?” Michael rubbed his head. “I’m sorry, but I just forgot! You know I forget things.”

 

As suddenly as it had begun to spiral away, Jeff’s face curled inward again and revealed clearly the shock on his face. Seemingly self-aware, Jeff quickly shifted his expression, back into the one of poorly-hidden annoyance.

 

He looked around to make sure they were alone. Then, low and grave, he stated, “Michael, you said you love me.”

 

The gears don’t turn in Michael’s head. Of course he loved Jeff, they were like brothers, weren’t they? He felt such an overwhelming weight in his chest when he looked at him-- wasn’t that just his longing to be part of their family? 

 

As if he were reading Michael’s mind, Jeff added, bitterly, “And not like I love Vinny or Evan! Not like you love a brother. I mean--  _ you meant _ \-- like, like a girlfriend, Michael! Like how you’re supposed to love a woman.” 

 

Again, he checked to see if the coast was clear. Even in his anger, Jeff wanted them to be safe. “And then you tried to  _ kiss me _ , Michael.”

 

“I-- I  _ what _ ?”

 

“You heard me! You pushed me up against the wall and you tried to kiss me.” His fingers ran through his beautiful curls. “Michael, I know you and me are both  _ weird _ \-- we’re nutjobs. But I’m not  _ that _ kind of weird, okay? I’m not a Sodomite, or a homophile, or whatever they’re calling themselves these days.”

 

Michael sat in stunned silence. Jeff bit his lip.

 

“I’ll keep it a secret, okay?” He reassured Michael. The fire in his voice had fizzled out into something weak and sad.  “If someone finds out, you really will get put away. You’re my  _ friend _ , so I don’t want…

 

“Just don’t-- just don’t do it again. Please?”

 

_ Please? _

 

_ Please? _

 

_ Please? _

 

_ Please? _

 

**Please.**

 

\--

 

_ Michael woke up confused. _

 

\--

 

The confusion continued into the day. Patrick was gone-- Michael called for him all morning, but still, he didn’t answer. Had he seen the dream? Did he know what it meant? Michael was still reeling from it, from the implications his young mind didn’t understand. The Michael in his dreams had wanted to kiss another boy, did that mean he would too? He wasn’t sure he wanted to kiss anyone, since that was a grown-up thing, wasn’t it? But dream-Michael was an adult, so he knew what he wanted, didn’t he?

 

Michael mulled over it, confused, disheartened. He was so busy in his own thoughts that several hours had passed before he noticed the tension around him.

 

The once-grabby nurses wouldn’t so much as touch him and the overly-chatty pharmacist who dispensed the morning drugs wouldn’t even speak to him. It wasn’t until the afternoon session with his therapist that he noticed things were awry.

 

The doctor seemed unnerved, almost like he was walking on eggshells. He had been such an authoritarian in prior sessions, to seem him all but cowering drove Michael out of his funk.

 

“How are we today, Patrick?” the doctor asked. Michael went stiff in his seat.

 

“Doctor, I’m Michael, not Patrick. Are you confused?” He tried to brush it off, but anyone with working eyeballs could see the sweat that was beading on his little forehead.

 

The doctor’s tight frown grew, somehow, even tighter. He began to scribble furiously on his legal pad, ignoring Michael. This was all fine and well, because his poor head had gone right back to fuzz. For the first time, in that uncomfortable office chair, he could  _ see _ Patrick, standing at the fore of his swimming mind. Patrick looked so much like him, small and frail-- but so arrogant. Michael blinked him away, but the impression of his smirk was burned into his retinas.

 

Michael returned to himself just in time to hear the doctor mutter:

 

“No, no,  _ too young for a system _ . Faking it to get out of trouble.”

 

\--

 

Patrick still hadn’t returned by the time Michael laid his head down to rest. This was the longest they’d been apart in the year they’d known each other and, frankly, Michael was scared. Patrick was supposed to keep himself a secret, so how did the doctor know about him?

 

He banged his fists against the sides of his head, trying to shut off his own brain. There had been too many questions today-- none of which had any answers he could come up with. So he screwed his eyes shut and focused in on the silence, praying that tonight he would dream.

 

\--

 

And he did.

 

\--

 

Black, suffocating woods circled him on every side. Mirroring the trees arced the sky, nearly devoid of stars. Only the moon and the crackling fire before him cut through the near-blinding darkness all around him. Around them. He was alone again with Evan.

 

Evan sat on a stump adjacent to him, running a knife down a whetstone and generally avoiding eye contact. Evan was usually so touchy-feely, so up in everyone’s space. Piled on top of everything else that had happened, it set off Michael’s paranoia.

 

“Hey, did something happen?” Michael asked.

 

Evan’s gaze flickered up briefly. “No, not yet.” he said. His voice was oddly gravelly. 

 

Michael didn’t quite catch on to what “Yet” could mean. “Where are we?” he asked.

 

“Fuck if I know. You’re the one who brought us here.”

 

“Evan!” Michael gasped. “Watch your language!”

 

Evan paused, stiffened, looked to Michael, deathly serious. His eyes were wide, almost animalistic.But as soon as he gave Michael a once-over, the tension evaporated away.

 

“Aw, damn it! You got me. How’re you so good at fucking with me, man?” 

 

Michael shrank in on himself, eyes fixed on Evan. He didn’t like this. He didn’t trust this. The dreams had never  _ scared _ him before.

 

“Evan, what’s going on? Why are we out here? I don’t understand.”

 

Through the foggy haze of fear, his mind pinpointed on the worst possible answer: Jeff had told him about what happened, and because of that, Evan was going to hurt him.

 

Michael didn’t even understand it fully himself, but he knew people thought it was bad. He knew Jeff thought it was bad. He’d heard Evan make jokes about it-- maybe he thought it was bad too. 

 

And in group, certainly they’d talked about Evan getting violent, but Michael had never witnessed it, so surely--  _ surely _ he wouldn’t do… what, exactly? Beat him up? Kill him? Worse? There were words he knew, words that described the awful things people did to one another, but he couldn’t imagine them-- couldn’t even begin to fathom what they meant.

 

Despite the months they’d spent together, Michael feared Evan would show him.

 

Evan stood up slowly, his movements deliberate. Luckily for Michael, he set down his knife. But he doesn’t have time to count his blessings, for in the blink of the eye, Evan was on him. 

 

He grabbed Michael by the shirt collar, yanked him to his feet. He snarled at him. Alarm bells went off in Michael’s head-- Evan’s eyes were wrong. They were a ghastly shade of violet, far from their usual soft brown. This wasn’t Evan, this was an animal in Evan’s skin, and the animal wouldn’t need the knife to hurt him.

 

“You got a lot of fucking nerve, you know that? You drag me out into the woods when I got  _ shit _ to do and then you wanna act like a goddamn moron? I have  _ plans _ , Pat, I can’t be tagging along every.  _ Single _ . Time you find some D-list game. The days we used to pull this cutesy shit are  _ long _ behind us now and you know th-”

 

Evan’s mouth parted just slightly as he finally noticed the shock on Michael’s face. The mention of Patrick had thrown Michael off so badly that he’d briefly forgotten he was being threatened, and it showed on his face.

 

“Wait just a second,” Evan muttered. He stuck his face into Michael’s hair and took several deep breaths. After a few moments he laughed and dropped Michael back onto his feet. 

 

“Well,  _ this _ is awkward. You’re not Patrick at all!”

 

“I-I’m Michael.”

 

“Shit!” Evan said, laughing again. He held his hand out to Michael, but before he even had a chance to take it, Evan clasped Michael’s in a death grip. 

 

“Sorry about that, little man. ‘Name’s HABIT.” He smiled. Michael didn’t like that smile, but he kept his mouth shut.

 

“How do you know Patrick, E-- umm, HABIT?” 

 

“Oh, me and Pat go  _ way _ back!” HABIT put his arm around Michael’s back and pulled him in tight. “We’ve been friends since way before you were born. Since way before the you that died was born too!”

 

“ _ What? _ ”

 

“Aw, kid, don’t worry about it.” HABIT tapped him on the head. “You wouldn't get it anyway-- brain’s too small to comprehend the uhh, finer details of reincarnation, or whatever.”

 

Michael’s head had begun to hurt. Were they role-playing right now? In his one-on-one sessions, his doctor had briefly talked about role-playing as a way to safely work through fantasies and trauma, but this was just odd. If he was just playing a role why were his eyes so weird? 

 

Michael came to the dreams to get away from the wide, confusing world, but now he was suffocating in the miseries his own brain had cooked up.

 

“Michael, listen, I feel bad for you.” Not-Evan said. He began to pull them toward the tree-line. “At some point tonight, Patrick clearly ditched you. You might not understand what’s happening, but I think I know why he did it.”

 

“Umm, why?”

 

“I think he had a fucked-up little idea. It’s cute, but fucked up. See, he brought me out here, said he had  _ game _ for me.” Just past the innermost ring of trees, Michael spotted something on the ground, just barely illuminated by the fire.

 

“That usually means one thing-- means me and him crack open a couple beers, bring our knives and our axes and our little ropes, and we enjoy ourselves till the sun comes up.”

 

It was human-shaped. It wriggled as they approached. Duct tape in all the wrong places.

 

“But it can’t be me and him if there’s no him, ya dig? So what I think is he left you on purpose. He wanted me to babysit you-- which is kinda fucking stupid, but that’s Pat for ya.”

 

Not-Evan knelt by the thing and he ripped the tape from its mouth. It screamed until it was silenced by a swift kick to the head.

 

“I think he wants you to get your hands dirty, have a little  _ fun _ .” He licked his upper lip. “You keen on that?”

 

Michael shook his head furiously.

 

“That really sucks, little man.”

 

HABIT grabbed him from behind, their bodies flush together. He held Michael’s wrists in a death grip and had, somehow slid the hilt of his knife into Michael’s hand. Michael tried and tried his damnedest to pull away, but he was locked snuggly into HABIT’s grasp. He kicked and fought and jabbed and yelled at the top of his lungs-- it did nothing for him but make him easier to control.

 

In an odd synchronization, the pair knelt together and hovered over the thing. HABIT leaned his weight into Michael, pushing him down into the thing’s face. He could make out the shape of its nose, its eyes. He could see faint scars on its chin, maybe from some accident. Michael began to weep.

 

“Don’t cry, little guy. He’s just sleeping. Why don’t we make sure his nap lasts a little longer, huh?”

 

HABIT jerked the two of them back onto their knees. He kissed up Michael’s neck, perhaps in a backwards, awful attempt to settle him down. When Michael cringed at the contact, HABIT simply muttered, “Loosen up, ya fucking fruit.”

 

But he couldn’t loosen up, and he couldn’t stop himself from crying. He was just a child, in an adult’s body, in a dream. Everything felt like delirium, nothing made sense. He couldn’t make this borrowed body cooperate with his hazy mind. It was so easy for HABIT to make him raise the knife.

 

Everything that followed was a blur. His brain shut down just as the knife came down and he felt the disgusting resistance of meat and skin. His mind would protect itself in any small way it could. 

 

But while he didn’t feel any more of it, or hear the sounds the thing made, or feel the coppery taste of the blood that landed in his mouth, he still knew what happened. Colors swirled behind his eyes, a soft and pastel mix of rainbow colors, with soapy bubbles at the surface, as if he gazed into the water of a bath. 

 

Red seeped in from the corners of his vision as his imaginary body began to ache from the strain of the act it committed. It diluted, saturated, mussed up the beautiful colors he’d imagined, tainting it into a sickly, medicinal pink. He wanted to hurl, wanted to expel some of the toxicity from his body-- to be rid of some small part of himself that existed while he became an animal, so that some minute article of humankind might remain.

 

But after the pink invaded, and the pink became red, he would have no further reprieve. Not until the deed was complete, and HABIT shoved him aside would there be any relief. Even this, however, was short-lived. As he blinked his eyes back into focus and the wide, dark sky greeted him, he felt a greedy hand run down his body and soon, the beautiful moon was cut off by HABIT’s disgusting visage. He takes a handful of Michael’s hair and with enough force to make his neck ache, yanks his head to the side.

 

He had done so good, HABIT insisted.  He deserved a reward. 

 

So with a hand in Michael’s hair and another that slithered up around Michael’s throat, HABIT kissed him. He forced his lips down on Michael’s and practically crushed him with the weight of his motions. Something slimy pushed itself into Michael’s mouth and probed around inside him. Michael pushed on the figure that hovered over him, but he was unable to resist him. So he did what came naturally: he cried. He wept and sobbed, until he gagged around the tongue in his mouth. Only after Michael felt warm bile rise up his throat did HABIT release him, but before he planted a tiny butterfly kiss on his lower lip.

 

Michael gasped in lungfuls of air, wide-eyed and mouthed, the image of a fish on land. While he suffered, HABIT wiped some unknown fluid from the corner of Michael’s mouth and licked it off of his thumb. “Not too bad for your first time, huh?”

 

Michael focused on the moon and waited desperately for the dream to end.

 

\--

 

Patrick didn’t come back. At least, not until deep into Michael’s adolescence. The coward left Michael to pick up the broken pieces he’d left behind. 

 

He wouldn’t learn until much later the extent of Patrick’s damage-- the assaults, the violence, the manipulation. He’d left so much for Michael, young and confused, to account for, to try and explain. He’d let Patrick take the wheel to help make his life better, to alleviate the boredom and the loneliness and while Michael was tucked away in the folds of his own mind, Patrick had only made things worse.

 

His parents visited him less after that. Their trips, always sans Shaun, had already been infrequent. In the aftermath they only came for obligatory holiday visits-- Birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas-- and they always left hastily, with some rushed excuse. 

 

Michael rotted. He trusted no one, remained closed off, always alone. Recovery became a fantasy, something that only existed in the pages of the self-help books in the library, and pursuing it seemed as futile as catching smoke with a net. So while he took the pills and he told the doctors the right things, and he went to group, and he painted the pictures that said “Progress!” instead of “Brain me!”, he never felt better. Never felt whole.

 

Which is why it came as such a surprise when he’s released. Certainly it took years-- far too many. But, seemingly out of the blue, he’s told that his stay at the hospital is over and he’s to return home. No income, no formal education-- no one to rely on, save for the brother he hadn’t seen in a decade. The thought gave him a panic attack.

 

\--

 

He decided to keep a video journal, partially on his doctor’s orders, but mostly as a way to combat his loneliness. It was a flare shot out into the void, made with the hope of catching the attention of other wayward souls. And it would! But not until after the man in the corner of his eye returned and his life spiraled into chaos. Then his life would never be free of the voyeuristic gaze of the anonymous masses, as cold and unsympathetic as the doctors who had raised him.

 

But amidst the chaos, and the bleakness, something odd happened.

 

_ “Have you heard of everymanhybrid? i think those guys are going through the same thing as you. :(“ _

 

It was a plain little comment, quiet in a loud swarm of “You-Should”s and “This is fake”s. He had not heard of them, so, in a desperate grab for solidarity, he opened their page.

 

He felt his heart sink into his stomach.

 

There they were, the young men from his dreams. They were real and they were very much having a similar, supernatural dilemma. 

 

Michael had to spend an hour just crying, pulling at his hair. They were real! Had they always been real, or had he willed them into existence out of pure desperation? Like always, he didn’t understand.  _ He never understood anything! _

 

After he had finished cleaning the fresh scratches on his arm, he wobbled out of the bathroom and threw his weight into his computer chair. With heavy, shaking hands he composed a new YouTube message. In it, he introduced himself and then went straight to explaining his situation. While he lamented the perils of Slenderman-based hauntings, he contemplated including fragments of his childhood dreams in the message. He wanted to tell them that he  _ knew _ them, long before he’d ever even heard of them. He wanted to ask if they knew him, too, if they’d ever seen him in their own dreams. He wanted to tell them how much he loved them. He wanted to ask them-- or perhaps, to warn them-- about the HABIT.

 

But he doesn’t include any of it. It was a bare-bones, straight-to-the-point message. He sent it and cursed himself immediately. They would see his videos, they would see he was a nutjob. The only people who had ever loved him (and they didn’t even know they loved him!) would never speak to him. For the second-- but not last-- time that night, he cried.

 

He distracted himself for hours, well into the night, and into the morning. By afternoon he had chewed his nails to stubs and worn a path into every available carpet. After that he lost track of time. It could have been hours, or even days, between then and when someone actually responded, and he doubted himself every second that passed.

 

He decided he would check his computer just once more before his body collapsed from exhaustion, and it was then he saw the little red notification. He nearly leapt out of his skin! Tears sprung to his eyes as he clicked on it.

 

_ Hey Michael _

 

_ Good to hear from you. It sucks you have to go through this too, but I’m glad you reached out. Would you be cool with adding me on Skype? (P.S., I hope you’re doing okay.) _

 

 

  * __[V]__



 

 

It was so basic, but Michael couldn’t stop himself from reading it over and over again. They didn’t think he was crazy-- they  _ wanted _ him. Wanted to talk  _ with _ him. It was an awful, self-imposed weight lifted.

 

The note had been signed “V”, for Vinny. He wondered if the Vinny in the videos was anything like the Vinny in his dreams. It had been a long time since he’d dreamt of them last, so the memories were fuzzy, but they seemed to line up. 

 

He bit his lip, excited at the prospect of having his old friends in his life again. Unable to help his brain, he let himself daydream. 

 

The dreams he lost himself in, they felt like love.

 

\--

 

Before he shut his computer off, he viewed the message one last time.

 

(P.S., I hope you’re doing okay.)

 

(Hope you’re doing okay.)

 

_ (Hope you’re okay.) _

 

He read it in his mind again and again, and for the first time in a long time he felt that, yes, he would be okay.


End file.
